


flowers for a stranger

by allp_wips



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-05-14 11:21:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19272256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allp_wips/pseuds/allp_wips
Summary: Alex leaves flowers on a stranger's grave for two years.





	flowers for a stranger

Alex’s father dies when she’s in high school. 

It should have been just another routine flight to another one of his conferences. He should have touched down in New York the next morning, and given the usual phone call back to Eliza Danvers, interrupted as usual by Alex or her sister grabbing the phone from their mother. Instead, Alex gets pulled out of class in the afternoon, to be informed by the grave-faced principal of a plane crash, and to be greeted outside the school by her teary-eyed mother trying to keep it together.

Jeremiah Danvers is laid to rest in the family plot, and Alex’s mother and sister visit his grave every Sunday with religious regularity. Alex never joins them, despite her mother’s frequent attempts to cajole her into coming along. Instead, every Friday after school, she takes the bus there by herself, and lays down flowers. 

It’s the one constant thing she has, throughout the tumultuous years of high school and college. Even when she moves out of town for college, Alex still makes the drive back every week, fresh flowers in hand to lay at her father’s grave. Even after college, long after the rest of her family’s visits turn into monthly or bi-monthly affairs, Alex keeps her routine up. 

Every week, she lays down the flowers, and sits by Jeremiah’s grave, and tells him about her life. All the stress and anger of her day goes away, until there’s just the strangest feeling that her father is right beside her, listening patiently to her airing her troubles. It’s like he’s taking her camping again, just the two of them talking together, with nothing but trees and birds around to overhear them.

\---

Alex is six months into her first job - a lab rat at a downtown research centre where the supervisor seems incapable of remembering her name half the time, but at least it means she’s able to cough up rent at the end of the month - when her father’s grave gets a neighbour.

In the plot next to theirs, that had remained unchanged for years, there suddenly springs up a fresh new marker, with a somewhat outlandish name etched into the stone.

It’s not the name that piques Alex’s interest, though. It’s the fact that, week after week, as she keeps visiting her father’s grave, the one next to his remains untouched, except by the weather. Not a single solitary flower adorns it, in any of her visits there. It’s a stark contrast to her father’s, which is always smothered in bouquets from Alex, her family, and every other life whom Jeremiah Danvers had touched in some way.

Whoever the owner of this unadorned grave is, it seems they had touched not a single one.

So, Alex - rational Alex, reliable Alex, reasonably intelligent Alex - starts doing a very stupid thing.

She starts taking the strange grave flowers.

\---

She doesn’t tell anyone about it, well aware that it’s the sort of thing that’d draw eyebrows and laughter, except maybe from her sister, who’d coo sympathetically and insist on driving there right then with a truckful of flowers. 

But, for some reason, Alex doesn’t even tell her. Doesn’t tell her that for months upon end, she’s been bringing a strange grave flowers every week, because she felt bad about the fact that it never got any. It’s just not the sort of thing anyone would expect her to do.

So she brings the stranger’s grave flowers, and she does this for two years, before someone interrupts her weekly ritual.

\---

“Why are you laying down flowers on my grave?”

It should have been another regular Friday evening of visiting her dad, of saying her usual words to him, and then leaving. It should have been, except it isn’t, because just as Alex has finished laying flowers on her dad’s grave, and turns to offer the stranger’s its own set, the question rings out through the silent graveyard.

Alex starts, and almost stumbles over a stone, in her hurry to look at the woman who had spoken, and who is now walking towards Alex, with a confused frown on her face.

“Why are you laying down flowers on my grave?” she demands again, when they’re only a few feet apart.

“Your grave?” Alex looks from her, back to the marker, then back to her. “What?”

The woman stares back, seeming to be even more confused than Alex herself.

“You don’t even know me,” she says, eventually. “Do you?”

That clears up exactly none of Alex’s confusion. “Should I?”

The woman shrugs. “Shouldn’t you know the person whose grave you take flowers to?”

The question rings out unanswered into the otherwise silent graveyard, as the two women stare at each other, both equally mystified for different reasons. When the tense silence stretches on, getting more uncomfortable by the second, Alex decides to break it.

“So you’re-” She gestures at the grave, where the Astra In-Ze carved into the marker is barely legible in the twilight. “You’re her.”

“I’m me.” Finally, an amused smile tilts up the woman’s mouth. “But, I’m Astra, yes.”

Alex feels angry, as if she’s been the butt of a joke, except she doesn’t get what the punchline is. “I don’t understand.”

Astra walks over to her own grave, and sits down on the raised stone with a low exhalation of breath. “It’s a long story, really.” 

It’s late, and Alex is alone in a graveyard with a woman she doesn’t know. She shouldn’t abandon any thoughts of running back to her bike. She shouldn’t walk over and sit down by the woman, staring at her face illuminated by the meager remains of sunlight.

She shouldn’t, but she does.

“Even War and Peace has a CliffsNotes version. Tell me.”

Astra stares at her, and then her eyes crinkle, as if she’s amused again.

“I was in the witness protection program until very recently,” she says. “My line of work got me into some very bad trouble with a man whom I loved and trusted with all my life. He wouldn’t rest until he had killed me, even if he had to hurt every other member of my family to get to me.”

“Oh.” Alex blinks. She doesn’t know what she had been expecting, exactly, but it hadn’t been that.

“I know how it sounds,” Astra says with a sigh. “Suffice it to say, there was no other way. My supervisors had me “killed” in action, and had a proper funeral and everything given, just to convince the man that I truly was gone from this world for good.”

“But why-” Alex starts, but Astra puts up a hand.

“CliffsNotes version, remember?”

Alex subsides.

“The only family I had remaining was my sister, and she already knew about the ruse.”

Alex closes her eyes momentarily as the words sink in, and lets out a little sigh, before facing the woman at her side.

“So that’s why no one ever laid flowers at your grave,” she says quietly, looking behind them at the pristine marker that’s marred only by her own offerings.

Astra raises her eyebrows, looking surprised at that declaration, before nodding.

“As it happens, the man in question died in prison last month, and I was finally free to assume my old identity again. I thought I’d drop by here, just to set things right, and-”

She shrugs, that amused smile coming onto her face again. “-and I see flowers. So, I lay in wait the next week. And I see you, bringing more flowers.”

Alex sighs. 

“Well, I guess that’s the best possible reason there could have been for why no one visited your grave,” she says, feeling she ought to say something. “I mean, you could have been a serial killer, or a child murderer, or a-”

Stop talking. Stop talking now. The part of her brain responsible for self-preservation finally gets through to Alex and she clams up. What the hell is she doing, babbling like this to a woman she barely knows, and an incredibly attractive woman at that?

Except that, Astra’s smile only widens, brightening up her hitherto grave face up, and her eyebrows lift again, comically this time.

“How do you know I’m not one of those things?” she asks.

“Um-” Alex feels clumsy all of a sudden in a way she’s not usually used to feeling. “I-”

“Nevermind,” Astra says, though the smile doesn’t leave her face, nor do her eyes leave Alex’s. “Although, I have a question of mine to ask you. Why?”

Alex doesn’t need her to explain what she means by that one word question.

“Because I was already taking flowers for my dad anyway,” she says, looking away. “And because yours looked so lonely, and-”

She trails off again, but when she turns to look at Astra once more, the smile has vanished from her face. In its place, there’s a strangely touched expression.

“Oh,” Astra says, and then, “You’re a very strange woman, Alex Danvers, to bring flowers to a grave just because you think it looks lonely.”

“How did you-” Alex starts.

Astra cuts her off by pointing to Alex’s lab coat, which is peeking out under her open jacket, and on which her name tag is clearly visible.

“Right,” Alex finishes, fiddling with her jacket sleeves.

When she looks back at Astra, the woman is still staring at Alex with that strange expression.

“Hey-” Alex starts, and then stops, wondering what the hell she’s thinking.

This is so inappropriate, and they’re in a graveyard and-

-and Astra just keeps looking at her, and she doesn’t seem in any sort of hurry to get up from the grave, or to leave behind Alex and her flowers, as any sane person would have.

“Hey what?” 

There’s a strange yearning on her face, and it strikes Alex that, after everything she’s been through, maybe this woman in front of her is just lonely as the grave that belongs to her, and maybe Alex herself had been a little lonely too, to start taking flowers to someone she never knew.

This is weird, and absolutely the last place in the world she should be asking something like this in. But, how many times in her life is she going to leave flowers at an unmarked grave only for the owner of that grave to show up and smile at her like that? Alex Danvers has never believed in miracles, or anything else of that sort - that’s her sister’s forté - but she thinks that maybe this counts as one. 

“You, um, you wanna go get some late lunch? Early dinner? There’s a good restaurant by the park.”

She cringes as soon as the words leave her mouth. Maybe she’s misjudged the situation. Maybe Astra is going to be horribly offended.

And then, another miracle happens.

“Yes,” Astra says, smiling wide. “After all, you did give me flowers for two years straight.”

\---


End file.
